My Take | Why Putin’s visit to China is a joint show of defiance towards US-led West
- President Vladimir Putin’s Beijing visit comes days after US report warned of war risks posed by ‘ultimate coordination’ between Russia and China
- While Putin has dismissed the ‘two-war’ construct as nonsense, China’s nationalist Global Times has slammed the report as ‘deeply unsettling’
As President Joe Biden prepared to visit Israel amid fears that the US might get dragged back into another messy conflict in the Middle East, Russia’s Vladimir Putin received a red-carpet welcome in Beijing.
The timing of Putin’s visit, which had been in the works for months, could not have been more interesting. It comes days after a US bipartisan congressional report expressed concerns about what it called “ultimate coordination” between China and Russia, warning that the United States must prepare for possible simultaneous wars with both countries.
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Such a scenario would leave the US facing “two nuclear peer adversaries” for the first time. While Russia remained a nuclear peer, China’s rapid military rise meant it was advancing towards “peer status across the full range of military capabilities,” Thursday’s report from the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the US said.